


flashback, warm nights

by warmfoothills



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bodily Injuries, Breaking and Entering, Deathly Hallows AU, Grand theft auto, Horcrux Hunting, Kissing in the Snow, M/M, a lot of blood, a time loop, and no snake-animated corpses!, but with ron and draco!, hospital food, instead:, kissing in the backseat, kissing in the freezer aisle, one psychopathic quinquagenarian, or more specifically, questionable headwear, teenage fugitives, the godric’s hollow christmas shitshow of 1997, the ~power of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22387504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmfoothills/pseuds/warmfoothills
Summary: “What’s killing me is that I actually quite fucking like Christmas, festival-for-a-personally-irrelevant-religion-turned-commercialised-garbage-holiday though it may be, and now I’m stuck in the perpetual almost-there of it all with an idiot who gets himself cut up every time no matter how differently I try and do things!”“Killing you?” Potter asks. “I thought I was the one who’s about to get my torso sliced into?”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 69
Kudos: 596





	flashback, warm nights

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up one month late with christmas fic*

The Polyjuice lasts twenty minutes. Draco had suspected as much — they’d used up most of their supply on the Ministry in September, leaving barely a mouthful each — but it’s still a little unnerving to feel all the parts of his body melt back into their usual appearance forty minutes earlier than expected.

Granger, predictably, freaks out.

“I _told_ you we should have waited and brewed more, this is completely ridiculous, not to mention dangerous and—”

Draco briefly entertains the idea of knocking her out. Just for a moment, so they can have a tiny respite from going over what they’ve been over three-hundred times already, but Weasley beats him to it — “Hermione, come on. We didn’t want to delay another month” — and he has to content himself with clenching his hands in his pockets.

“We just put flowers on my parents’ grave,” Potter says mildly. He’s remarkably relaxed for someone standing right outside the place where said parents were violently murdered. “And now we’re about to go into their house. Even if we didn’t look like ourselves, I think anyone watching would be suspicious.”

Granger has no argument for that. For his part, Draco’s hoping there really _isn’t_ anybody watching them. The whole village has an odd feel to it, too empty, like there are people just out of sight somewhere.

“Alright.” Potter’s hand is on the gate. “Let’s go.”

It had been his idea to come here. Draco doesn’t think any of the rest of them would have dared suggest it, or tried to stop him once he’d made up his mind. Granger has a point, it’s a risk, but he understands why Potter wants to see the place for himself. And, as Potter himself pointed out, it’s not unlikely the Dark Lord has hidden a Horcrux here. He’d left the ring in the Gaunt house.

All four of them hold their breath when Potter tests the front door with his wand, Draco feels the collective pause, but nothing happens. Potter carefully pushes it open and nothing happens then, either.

“Alright,” Potter says, again. Draco can’t tell if it’s for their sake or his own.

The door opens onto a small hallway, more doors off to the left and up ahead, a rusted pram still pushed against one wall and the stairs to the first floor only a couple of paces from where they stand, huddled in the entrance. No one seems to want to be the first one to go any further.

It throws Draco, standing there, faced with the idea of a tiny baby Potter, one who’d probably learned to crawl along this floor and pull himself up on the bannister. From the outside, the place where the killing curse backfired is obvious, half of the roof caved in, but from in here it looks like a normal house. A little shabbier, a lot less grand than what Draco grew up in, but a home all the same. They probably had to keep a protective enchantment across the bottom stair to stop baby Potter trying to climb them.

The Potter of the here and now seems frozen, lost in thought until Weasley nudges them all gently forwards, pulls the front door closed behind them. The silence gets very loud.

They should probably split up. It’d be the most efficient way to find the Horcrux, if there is one here, but nobody suggests it. Draco thinks they’re all probably feeling a little spooked, and, loathe though he is to admit it, even in his own head, a little protective of Potter, too. It doesn’t seem right to force him to go through the house alone.

“I think we should start upstairs,” Granger says, quietly. “That’s where—”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Potter nods. “Yeah. Ok.”

It’s a relief when he moves, Draco had been half worried he’d just stay there, staring at the hallway with that indecipherable expression. Back in the graveyard he’d cried, and Draco had felt at a complete loss, no idea how to comfort him or why the pain on his face made Draco’s chest feel hollow, but this is worse, somehow. There was an emptiness in his eyes for a second there that scared Draco.

By unspoken agreement, they head for the destroyed bedroom on the right. It’s not difficult to find — most of the doors upstairs are hanging open, the dust-covered bathroom visible through one, and the place where the ceiling crumbles into nothing is a bit of a giveaway. Potter pauses again at the threshold, a tiny hesitation before he steps through, Draco on his heels, the other two bringing up the rear.

The room is barely recognisable as the nursery it must have once been — it’s dark, even with the roof letting moonlight in, and there’s splintered wood on the floor that could be the remnants of a crib but it’s half buried in dead leaves, everything damp and coated in sixteen years of dirt. It hardly seems like the kind of place the Dark Lord would deem worthy of hiding a piece of his soul.

Granger tries a non-verbal _Accio_ , Draco feels the small wave of her wand behind him. Nothing moves. No-one’s much surprised.

“Should we—” Weasley starts to say, hushed, prodding at some of the debris with one foot, but then there’s a noise from somewhere and Granger shushes him.

It came from behind them, Draco thinks. Back out on the landing, or in one of the other rooms. There was only one door still closed, presumably the other bedroom, but the idea of having to go and open it seems terrifying. They haven’t even done any of the cursory checks for traps or enchantments, save for Potter’s initial test of the front door, and it suddenly seems stupidly remiss of them.

Granger seems to be thinking along the same lines because she turns around, wand raised. “I can’t believe we didn’t—” she starts, in a whisper. “ _Homenum Revelio_.”

Draco doesn’t need her sharp inhalation to realise what the spell’s revealed.

“Ok,” Potter says quickly, quietly. “Ok, we have two options,” but he doesn’t get the chance to tell them what the options are, because there’s the unmistakable sound of a door opening down the hall.

Draco’s mouth goes dry. They should have realised there might be someone here. All that time planning how to avoid being recognised and they didn’t stop to consider the possibility that there’d be more than just spells protecting the place. It’s the fucking Ministry all over again. Every time they come up with a new plan, find a new lead, a new thing to throw all their effort behind, he forgets just how out of their depths they actually are.

There’s no time to try and leave. Draco’s pretty sure that’s one of the options Potter was going to suggest, but there are already footsteps on the landing. He hopes Potter’s other plan is something more detailed than just stay put and hope for the best, because that’s all Draco’s come up with.

The footsteps stop, a figure steps out of the shadows.

Dolohov doesn’t look any different from the last time they saw him, not physically, but there’s a wildness behind his eyes that Draco recognises. It’s what people look like when they’ve had a good portion of their higher brain function _Crucio_ ’d out of them.

“Well well well,” Dolohov croaks, and Draco’s waiting for him to say something more, something equally as stupid and would-be villainous, like _we meet again_ , like this is one of the books Draco used to read by wandlight when he couldn’t sleep as a kid, but he doesn’t, he just stops in the doorway, blocking their only exit, and smiles.

Clearly, the Dark Lord decided to spare him after the run-in on Tottenham Court Road. Spare him and then set him to work here, guarding this house in case they showed up. Granger was right all along in her reluctance to come — they’ve walked straight into a trap.

Draco makes himself stay calm, because no one’s saying anything, everyone locked in position, Dolohov looking like this is the best Christmas present he could have asked for.

“God, you _again_?” He forces his mouth to move, breaking the silence.

Dolohov grins at him. “Draco. Your parents will be so disappointed to know you’re still alive.”

Pain spikes momentarily in Draco’s chest. He knows it’s probably a lie, that his mother, maybe, still cares about him, but it hurts all the same.

He pushes it down. “Not as disappointed as I am to find _you_ still are,” he says, with a nonchalance he doesn’t feel.

Dolohov laughs at him.

Potter has inched himself slightly in front of Draco, blocking him with a shoulder. Stupid, overprotective Gryffindor. Draco’s not going to move, though. _He’s_ not a Gryffindor.

“So,” Potter says. Apparently they’re all playing the casual game; Draco can hear the disguised worry in Potter’s voice, even if Dolohov can’t.

“It’s not here,” Dolohov sing-songs, still grinning.

Draco doubts very much that the Dark Lord has actually told him what _it_ is, not after the incident with Lucius and the diary, (to think that thing was just sitting in his _house_ the whole time Draco was growing up), but he knows they’re after something.

“If you don’t mind,” says Potter. “I don’t think we’ll take your word for it.”

Draco sees what he’s trying to do, keep talking and then go for the element of surprise. Potter’s good, but he’s also a teenager, whilst Dolohov’s a fully grown wizard with a trigger-happy wand arm and little patience for chit-chat. Potter barely gets his own wand raised before there’s a sound like an explosion and shards of something hit Draco all over, cutting into his skin.

Granger starts yelling, “No, the bag, my _bag_ ,” and Potter is shouting too, there’s so much noise suddenly, and parts of Draco are definitely bleeding. The night has gone from quiet terror to outright chaos in less than a second and Draco’s confused, his ears ringing, skin smarting.

Weasley tries to stun Dolohov but he dances aside and cackles, shoots a jet of fire out of his wand that sets the mouldy curtains alight.

Draco knows their best bet is to just get out as fast as possible, but he can’t see how to get past Dolohov. Even the four of them together are not much of a match for a Death Eater who has nothing left to lose and everything to gain — Potter saw the way the Dark Lord punished Dolohov after Granger Obliviated him, had told Draco about it in a disgusted whisper, and the evidence of it is clear in that crazed sheen to his eyes. He’s desperate to get back on his master’s good side.

If Voldemort even has such a thing, Draco thinks, and aims an _Impedimenta_ at him. Dolohov dodges it easily and laughs again.

Fear burns at Draco’s extremities and he tamps down on it, tries to focus. Dolohov’ll be under strict instructions not to kill Potter, but he’ll definitely go for the rest of them if he gets the chance. He proves Draco right a split-second later, sending a Killing Curse so close to Granger’s head that Weasley and Potter both start shouting even louder and the smell of burned hair fills the room.

Potter throws himself in front of Granger, wand raised. Dolohov casts something that Draco can’t hear, his mouth curling around the incantation, and Potter drops like a stone, taking Draco’s stomach with him.

There’s a strange, angry noise that Draco takes a couple of seconds to realise came out of his own mouth, mingling with the sounds of broken glass under their feet, Granger’s panicked yelling, Dolohov’s laughter. It’s only because Dolohov’s momentarily preoccupied, celebrating his hit on Potter by trying to curse Weasley’s left leg off at the shin, that Draco manages to body-bind him. It’s not a strong spell, Draco’s head is muddled and his arm’s shaking, he can smell blood and it’s terrifying, distracting, but it makes Dolohov fall back at just the right angle that his head cracks into the wall and he goes still.

The three of them are on Potter instantly.

“Fucking hell,” breathes Weasley.

A huge gash rips down Potter’s side, right through the layers of clothing to the skin underneath. There’s too much blood and shredded fabric in the way to see how bad it is but it looks to be the length of his torso at least, running all the way from the base of his arm to the waistband of his jeans. Draco swallows hard.

Granger casts several spells that don’t work, then tries something that makes Potter’s skin glow a cool blue colour, shaking her head. “It’s part of the curse. I think it’s blocking any healing spells.”

Panic claws at Draco’s lungs. “So?” he asks Granger expectantly. “What do we do?”

She looks as terrified as he feels. This is so much worse than when Weasley got splinched — bits of Potter’s _insides_ are visible, dark and wet and something white that might be bone.

“We need to get out of here,” Weasley says. He’s unexpectedly good in an emergency, good at keeping a level head and forcing them all to stay calm, Granger especially, who has a tendency to let pressure get the better of her. “He might wake up.” He casts a look over at Dolohov, still out cold.

They try levitating Potter but the spell won’t hold and between them, Weasley and Draco have to hoist him up and support him with a shoulder under each arm to get him out of the house. He doesn’t make a single noise, though Draco can feel in the tension of his body how much pain he’s in. They leave a nice trail of blood all the way down the stairs.

“What now?” asks Weasley, when they’re in the street, Potter steadily turning the snow beneath him red. “Mungo’s?”

Granger shakes her head, shivering — from cold or fear, Draco can’t tell — and starts pacing. “We can’t risk that. We just need to get him somewhere safe so I can think.”

“And how’re we gonna do that?” Weasley says. “We can’t Side-Along him like this, ‘Mione.”

“I know! I don’t—”

“There was a—” Potter says, ragged. “A car. Parked on the street back there.”

He jerks his head and they all turn to look, Draco craning round to avoid having to move Potter too much. He’s never been in a car in his life. Never even been on the Knight Bus, but right now it might be their only hope.

Granger stares at Potter. “I can’t—”

“You _can_ ,” Weasley says firmly. He nods at Draco and they start shuffling Potter down the street, leaving Granger to hurry after. “You can drive.”

“I know _that_ ,” she says. “But I— it’s _stealing_ , Ron, I—”

Potter chuckles weakly at the look on Weasley’s face and then starts coughing, his body shaking violently with the force of it.

“Perspective, Hermione,” Weasley reminds Granger. “If we don’t do this, Harry’ll—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence and the end of it hangs there, unthinkable, in the air.

Granger makes a small noise of despair. “Can’t we just try a Side-Along—”

Draco, aware that they’re losing precious seconds the longer they stand there deliberating, cuts in. “Granger, enough. We can’t apparate with him, he’s half-dead.”

Potter tries to say something in response but he can’t catch his breath, gasping through the pain, and Draco gestures at him. “Look at him!”

She acquiesces, body sagging in surrender as she looks at Potter. “Fine.” She shoots a reluctant _Alohomora_ at the car so that it starts making this horrible, loud alarm sound, its lights flashing wildly until she angrily jabs her wand again and silences it.

“Get _in_ then,” she says, pulls herself into the driver's seat and glares at the three of them.

Weasley manages to half-lift, half-shove Potter on to the backseat whilst Draco stands there feeling completely fucking useless and once Potter’s slumped in a vaguely upright position, Draco climbs in too and Weasley goes round the front and the doors all get slammed shut and Granger speeds them off down the quiet street.

“Put your seatbelt on,” she tells Weasley.

Draco doesn’t even try to figure out how his seatbelt works, just shifts along until he can prop Potter up, kneeling half over him and tugging him down gently to lie flat when he realises the momentum of the car is making his head bounce all over the place.

The backseat gets damp and sticky pretty quickly, Potter’s bleeding so heavily. Whatever batshit, magic-repelling curse Dolohov’s hit him with means none of Draco’s _Scourgify_ s work and his hands are red. He hasn’t seen this much blood since it was his own, mixing with toilet water on the floor of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

The similarity is not lost on Potter. “Bit of a role reversal,” he laughs, chokes through whatever’s caught in his throat — blood, probably, Draco can see that it’s in his mouth, his teeth a weird, smudged pink. He can’t believe Potter’s joking about that day, joking at _all_ , really, or talking for that matter, the state he’s in.

“Funny, I don’t remember you crouched over my body trying to keep my intestines from falling out after you so rudely tried to remove them,” Draco snaps, the sick, worried feeling in his stomach sharpening his words. Potter only smiles at him. They’ve had that conversation already. That conversation is the whole reason Draco’s even here.

“Where are we going, Granger?” he asks over his shoulder.

She’s got them out onto a busier road, steering through traffic, frantic, looking at every road sign they pass. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I thought a hospital maybe, but how would we explain how Harry got hurt? And if the wound is unresponsive to healing spells, Muggle methods might not work either.” She bites her lip, Draco sees her in the mirror. It’s a bad sign.

Potter starts shaking, his teeth knocking together and Draco attempts a warming charm, knowing even before he casts that it won’t work.

He swears and crouches lower over Potter, trying to share some of his body heat, but there’s not much of it to spare. Potter quirks a look at him at this new position and ok, Draco is practically on top of him, his body held uncomfortably upwards to avoid crushing the gaping hole in Potter’s side, but he’s _dying_ , Draco doesn’t have time to feel awkward.

“Hi,” Potter says, nonsensical. Their faces are very close together and there’s blood in Potter’s eyelashes, red framing the green of his eyes. How appropriately fucking festive.

“Alright?” Draco asks.

Potter might nod, or it might just be a full-body shiver. “Cold.”

Granger overhears. “Ron, the heating.” She takes a hand off the wheel to slap at Weasley’s arm, directing him in a low, impatient voice until he finds a dial in front of him and turns it. Draco feels warm air cough out onto the side of his face from a vent set into the edge of the door and lets out a shaky breath. He doesn’t move off of Potter.

“Let’s just get to a doctor,” Weasley says from the front. “It’s the next best thing, after Mungo’s.”

“Malfoy,” says Potter, quiet. His hands have wound themselves tight into the front of Draco’s jumper.

Draco narrows his eyes at him. “Come on, Potter, you’ve had worse. Watching you try to dance at the Yule Ball, _that_ was painful. This is nothing.”

Potter laughs and then sucks air in, harsh, through his teeth, his grip on Draco’s clothes tightening until his nails dig into the skin underneath. “Don’t try to be funny,” he gets out through gritted teeth.

“Can’t help it.” Draco shifts back on the seat until he can dislodge Potter’s hands and pull the jumper over his head. He’s wearing another one underneath, layered up against the freezing cold, but Potter tries for a wolf-whistle anyway, his lips pursing around the non-sound that his mouth is too dry to actually make. Draco would swat at him for that, if he wasn’t bleeding out.

He balls the jumper up and presses it to Potter’s side, remembers belatedly that keeping pressure on a wound is what you’re supposed to do and ignores the way Potter cries out like he can’t help it, flinching away. The jumper, like everything else that touches Potter, gets soaked through within minutes.

“Granger,” Draco snaps.

“I’m trying,” comes her harried response. “I think we’re near Swindon, I’m sure there’s a hospital..”

Draco stops listening. Potter’s eyes have fluttered closed. “Potter,” he says, sharp.

Potter makes a humming noise, one Draco recognises from when he was to prod Potter awake in the middle of the night and tell him it’s his turn to keep watch.

“Hey.” Draco leans back down over him. “Hey, Potter. C’mon. Can’t sleep now.” He doesn’t know what will happen if Potter falls unconscious, but he knows it won’t be _good_. Nausea creeps up his throat and he ignores it, forces it back down. “Seriously.” He pats gently at Potter’s cheek. “Oi, you lazy sod.”

Potter doesn’t even smile. His face is quickly going slack and he still hasn’t opened his eyes. Draco wants to shake him, can feel himself getting woozy with panic. His head swims and the car jolts to the right as Granger overtakes a line of cars, speeding down the road.

 _No_ , Draco thinks. Blinks down at Potter’s face, too pale.

“Potter,” he says again. “You really have to wake up,” and then, ironically, he passes out.

///

Draco comes to standing up. It’s a weird sensation — he’s never woken up on his feet before and it disorientates him for a second. It’s the first thing he’s aware of, being upright, and then the second, immediately after: a dull pain at the back of his neck, like an oncoming headache only more localised, pinching at the base of his skull and behind his ears.

He opens his eyes.

“Alright?” Potter says, looking mildly concerned. He’s standing next to Draco in the street. In the snow. With Weasley and Granger, and the half-ruined remnant of his first home in front of them.

“What the—” Draco starts to say, looking around wildly. This has— they’ve already _done_ this.

“I know.” Potter grimaces. “I thought it’d last longer too, but I guess—”

“No.” Draco cuts him off because he’s talking about the Polyjuice. “Not— what’s going on?”

“It’s run out,” Granger says, her voice already starting to take on the worried tone that Draco knows is only going to get worse as the night progresses. “I _told_ you we should have waited and brewed more—”

He cuts her off, too. “ _No_. I don’t mean—” _How_ does he know her voice is going to get more worried? Why isn’t he in the backseat of a car with an unconscious Potter? He takes a step back and peers down the road. The car’s sitting there, parked right where they found it. Or are about to find it. Fuck, did he hit his head?

“We just put flowers on my parents’ grave,” Potter’s saying to Granger but Draco’s not listening, has already _heard_ it. Has seen Potter put his hand on the gate like that and steel himself before pushing it open.

It could just be a deja-vu thing. Draco’s pretty sure there’s seer blood way back in his ancestry somewhere. Maybe he dreamed everything, or had a vision right there on the pavement, a premonition of what was going to happen, and now he’s about to see if it was right. He never expected real Divination to feel like this, but then he’s never had a vision before, maybe this is how it works. He would ask Granger, but this is the one subject she refuses to take seriously, and Potter’s already halfway up the path, there isn’t time.

Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe what he remembers _did_ happen and he’s still in the backseat somewhere, unconscious, reliving it in vivid detail inside his head. Either way, he can’t do much but follow Potter into the house and find out.

It’s the same, everything, their walk upstairs, the bedroom, the door opening and the footsteps. Draco’s too busy hoping he’s wrong, that it won’t be _exactly_ the same and Dolohov won’t be there, to realise he could have stopped this happening if he’d thought about it properly. And then it’s too late and they’re trapped again, Dolohov leering from the doorway.

He does, at least, stop Dolohov’s initial spell, the one that goes off like a small explosion. Dolohov tries it again right after Draco blocks him, succeeds in blowing out all the windows, but by that point Draco’s had just enough time to shout “Granger! The bag!” in warning and get a hastily conjured shield up, which protects them from the worst of the flying glass.

It’s not, however, strong enough to hold up against curses.

Potter falls just like he did last time, onto his knees first and then face down, making a wet choking noise. He wasn’t even throwing himself in front of Granger this time, just standing there, and Dolohov still went for him.

Draco’s so angry — at himself, for knowing this was going to happen and not stopping it, at Dolohov, for having access to spells they’ve never even heard of, at whatever fucked up bit of magic is making him live this _again_ — that he manages a Stunning spell so strong it blasts right through Dolohov’s own shield and knocks him out.

Weasley makes a low whistling noise of appreciation, but Draco doesn’t have time to enjoy it, Potter’s bleeding.

He knocks Granger’s wand aside as he kneels down. “Weasley. Help me.”

“What are you—?” Granger looks at him, eyes wide, scared.

“I’ll explain as we go. _Weasley_.”

They get Potter downstairs again, as Draco tells them about the anti-healing curse. Granger casts the diagnosis spell again, just to double check, Potter glowing blue in the dark hallway for a moment, and shakes her head in distress when it confirms what Draco already knows: they can’t do anything for him, they need to get help.

“It’s a good thing you recognised it,” she says, running to hold the gate open so they can hobble through, Potter leaning heavily on them both, dripping blood on the flagstones. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Draco doesn’t tell her he’s never seen anything like it either, that he only knows because he’s lived this all before. He just keeps shuffling Potter down the road towards the car as fast as he can. Weasley seems to catch on to his plan pretty quickly, because he doesn’t ask where they’re headed, he just helps.

“Alright,” Draco breathes, when they reach it. “Granger.”

She stares at him.

He gives her an impatient look. “ _I_ can’t drive it. Potter here can barely _walk_ , let alone operate a vehicle, and I seem to remember Weasley crashing a Ford Anglia into the Whomping Willow back in second year, so I really think you’re our best bet.”

Hmm. Nice to know his snark is still there, despite how terrified he is.

Potter snorts a laugh and it kick-starts the violent coughing, almost doubling him over.

“I was twelve,” Weasley says, exasperated, but his eyes are on Potter, watching him with a worried expression.

Granger stands there, fretting. “Couldn’t we try Side—? she starts to say, but Draco’s losing patience.

“Merlin _fucking_ — I don’t have time to convince you to do this again, Granger. Let’s go.”

He gets a weird look from Weasley at his use of “again”, but he doesn’t care. They need to move. He didn’t stop Potter getting hurt, but he can make sure that, this time, they get to the hospital before either of them pass out. He can still save him.

“He’s in no state for Apparition, ‘Mione,” Weasley says, placating, and that’s what does it.

“Fine.” Her tone is exactly the same as before: reluctant, annoyed that this is their only option. She jabs her wand. “Get in then.”

“Bit of a—” Potter tries to say once they’re inside, but Draco finishes for him.

“Role reversal, I know.”

Potter looks at him askance even as the blood reaches his socks, staining them. Living this again is forcing Draco to notice new and horrible details. Still: the bright side. He knows Potter’s going to start shaking soon and he preempts it, climbs over him, and gets the same startled look as last time.

“He’s cold, Weasley. There’s a thing near you that makes hot air come out of these.” Draco slaps the small vent he knows will kick to life if Weasley hurries up and finds the right switch.

“What about warming charms?” Granger asks, her eyes off the road as she meets his in the mirror, panicked in a way Draco’s already seen once.

“They won’t hold,” Draco says. “I tried.”

“Whe—?” Potter starts to say but he has to stop to cough, and Draco huffs, trying to be annoyed and coming up with nothing but fear.

“Before,” Draco says impatiently. So far everything’s happened almost exactly as it did last time, and he doesn’t know how long he has before he or Potter passes out.

“Let’s just get to a doctor,” Weasley says from the front. Draco doesn’t listen to the rest of the sentence. He stares down at Potter instead, whose eyes are, for now, reassuringly open and giving Draco a look like _he’s_ the one they should be worrying about. Draco’s finding it hard to tear himself away, half-scared that the moment he does, the moment he even blinks, Potter’s eyes will close and Draco will have failed, again.

Granger interrupts their staring. “There’s dittany in the bag, Malfoy.”

Right, the bag. It hadn’t exploded this time. Silver linings. Draco summons it out and pulls off the stopper, shooting Potter a grimace of apology — he knows the feeling of dittany on an open wound, it stings like an absolute bitch — but Potter’s saved the pain, Draco can’t get the bottle anywhere near him. It’s like there’s some kind of invisible barrier there, stopping anything that will help.

“Oh perfect,” Draco growls.

“Not working?” Granger asks, anxiety thinning her voice. “Ok, it’s ok, I think I can get us—”

“You need to go faster,” Draco cuts her off. Potter’s eyes are half-lidded already, and it’s scaring him. “Seriously, Granger. He’s going to pass out and then _I’m_ going to pass out and either he dies or I wake up back on that street and have to do this all over again.”

He doesn’t care that he sounds insane. He’ll explain it all properly once he’s sure Potter’s not going to die in the back of a car. He knows magic and he knows that, whilst he might be about to loop back to the start again, it’s equally possible that this has just been a one-off, a random blip, and if that’s the case, this is his only chance to make it right.

“Don’t yell at her,” Potter says beneath him, quiet.

Draco’s chest fills with dread when he looks down to see Potter’s eyes are closed. “I’m trying to save your life here, Potter.”

“I know,” Potter mumbles, sleepy and indistinct. “S’nice. But it’d be nicer if you stopped yelling so I could sleep.”

“You can’t,” Draco says, swallowing around the lump in his throat, but Potter just shushes him softly, and everything goes dark.

///

This time, it’s easier to get his bearings. He’s expecting the feeling of packed snow beneath his feet, the concerned looks from the others once he opens his eyes.

“Fuck,” he sighs, unsure whether he’s relieved or not. “Ok. One more time.”

“Erm,” says Potter.

“Alright there, Malfoy?” Weasley asks.

He turns to Granger, the most likely of the three of them to understand. “I’m stuck in some kind of— time loop thing. I’ve already done this twice. I know who’s in there and what’s going to happen.”

Granger’s brows knit.

“Hang on, _who_?” Weasley says.

Draco waves a hand at him. “Yes. Look, I know it sounds crazy,” and he tries to explain as best he can, about Dolohov and the car and Potter, bleeding, unconscious.

When he’s done, they don’t look convinced.

“But this is a good thing, right?” Potter says eventually, frowning at him. “If you’re telling the truth and you know what’s going to happen, we’ll just do it differently. Search the place first, or take Dolohov by surprise and knock him out before he even knows we’re here.”

Draco’s pretty sure Dolohov already knows, can probably see them from the window. He fights an urge to groan out loud in frustration. It’s not that he blames Potter for his skepticism, he knows the story sounds ridiculous, but he _does_ blame him for being brave to the point of stupidity, still determined to go in there even with the chance he’ll end up with near-fatal injuries. If someone told _Draco_ he was about to be carved into, he’d be running in the opposite direction.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says, but it’s impossible to stop Potter once he’s decided something and the rest of Draco’s furiously whispered protests fall on deaf ears as they head into the house once more. At least Granger — dependably sensible Granger — takes his advice to protect her beaded bag with an _Imperturbable_ charm, doing so without comment.

They go through the whole thing again, like it’s a play they’re rehearsing where Draco knows all the stage directions but can’t make anyone deviate from the script. Potter’s plan to take Dolohov by surprise fails rather spectacularly, and the small part of Draco that thought Potter might not get hurt, third time lucky and all that, is proved very wrong, very quickly.

“Notice I’m being gracious and not saying _I told you so_ ,” he says when they’re in the backseat once more, bloodied and breathless.

Potter rolls his eyes, which seems to take it out of him because they slip closed right after. “Pointing out that you’re choosing not to say it isn’t any better than actually saying it.”

Draco’s vision goes blurry. “Oh, well in that case,” he says, determined to have the last word before they pass out, “I told you so.”

///

It happens again, over and over, repeat possibly ad infinitum, only Draco really fucking hopes not. The finer details change depending on how he plays it, but Potter on the wrong end of Dolohov’s wand is the one constant. Draco can’t figure out how to stop it.

Sometimes he manages to hit Dolohov with something, but the psychopath always gets that curse out before his body slams into the floor, the point of his wand always finding Potter before he crumples, or staggers back, or, the one time Draco just up and kicks him in the balls, magic be damned, drops to his knees, howling.

That time is bad. Draco accidentally tosses his wand aside (he gets a little caught up in the moment) so Dolohov slices Potter _and_ manages to get Draco with a nasty battering hex that dislocates his shoulder, even as he’s lying on the floor with one hand cupped protectively between his legs.

Draco starts to wish, pointlessly, that the shitting Dark Lord had chosen someone with a few less brain cells to guard this place. There are certainly enough idiots amongst the Death Eaters, people Draco would have had a chance at holding off. It’s not like there’s even a Horcrux here, a fact he’s had to accept after multiple searches of the entire house. He doesn’t understand why it needs the level of sadistically enthusiastic protection that Dolohov is willing to provide.

It doesn’t matter, either way. He still ends up with a lapful of half-dead Potter every time, but living the same thing over and over gives a person time to think about these things.

Just once, he manages to get to Potter in time, predict the right moment and push him out of the way, but all that achieves is both of them in the firing line and he lies there, breath stolen by the pain, feeling Potter shake under him as they bleed out together and it goes black and Draco wakes up back in the street in the snow. He doesn’t try that again.

///

“What’s killing me is that I actually quite fucking _like_ Christmas, festival-for-a-personally-irrelevant-religion-turned-commercialised-garbage-holiday though it may be, and now I’m stuck in the perpetual almost-there of it all with an idiot who gets himself cut up every time no matter how differently I try and do things!”

Draco might be starting to lose it a little bit. The other three stare at him as they’ve stared at him many, _many_ times before. Like he’s _already_ lost it.

“Killing _you_?” Potter asks. “I thought I was the one who’s about to get my torso sliced into?”

“Exactly!” Draco spits, and resists the urge to just whack him over the head. He hasn’t tried that yet — if Potter’s unconscious he can’t run in there and get hurt. “So if you could, maybe, I don’t know, _try_ this time, _not_ to let that happen, that’d be great.”

“ _This_ time?! It’s only the first fucking time for me, remember?”

“Yes, thanks. And I also remember the other forty-seven times, all of which ended with both of us covered in your blood.”

Granger cuts in. “Forty-seven?”

Draco sniffs. “Give or take. It’s getting hard to keep track.”

He has to keep reminding himself that the time-loop explanation is only starting to get incredibly old for him. The others still seem to be experiencing everything fresh over again. Sometimes they take his word for it readily enough and they all go in together, prepared, cautious. (Not that it actually helps any, Potter still gets split open from armpit to hip.) Other times he can tell they don’t really believe him until they’re in there, face to face with Dolohov.

If he was stuck in literally any other handful of hours, Draco thinks he might be getting bored by now. Unfortunately, being forced to watch Potter’s flesh get torn into and the general sense of impending doom makes it a little hard to find anything about the situation dull, repetitive though it is.

“Right.” Potter claps his hands together. Draco’s become quite familiar with that little move. It’s the “I think I believe you but literally nothing is going to change my mind about walking into this house” clap.

“Oh, let’s just go,” Draco says, eager to get another round over with, and pushes the gate open.

///

The thing is, Draco’s never claimed to be a saint. He’s only very recently got on board with this whole good-guys, self-sacrificing thing, so he’d be lying if he said, after so many go-arounds, that the idea doesn’t cross his mind. Just giving up. Letting the universe do what it’s clearly so desperate to do and finish Potter off.

Except he can’t shake the thought that he’s stuck in this loop for a reason. The chances of it being a completely random coincidence are slim to none and he’s a _wizard_ , he doesn’t believe in coincidences when it comes to magic.

He allows himself one experiment, where he waits outside whilst the others go in. There’s no convincing _them_ to just leave it, find somewhere to disapparate and write off the whole trip as a waste of time — and not for lack of trying, he’s suggested it so many times it doesn’t even embarrass him anymore, coming off as a coward — but he wants to see what will happen if he takes himself out of the equation. Plus, he’s fucking _exhausted_. It feels like weeks since he was last curled up on his lumpy bunk mattress, and he thinks a break from the constant duelling and running and wound-staunching is pretty well deserved by this point.

Weasley frowns at him, and Potter looks so disappointed it makes Draco’s throat tight, but he forces himself not to care. It’ll start all over again soon, and they won’t even remember that he chose to stay outside.

It’s harder than he thought it would be to just stand there, because he can still hear everything that’s going on. There are a lot of shouts and bangs and flashes, so many that he’s surprised no one on the street comes out to see what’s happening. Maybe the magic of the house that hides it from Muggles masks the noise as well.

Of course, when it goes quiet, it’s so much worse. He goes in after barely a minute of silence, has to see for himself that it didn’t work, that staying outside didn’t do anything to save Potter.

He can read the blame on Weasley’s face, clear as day, as he helps carry Potter down the stairs. It’s obvious he thinks Draco should have been there, and Granger, too. She’s better at hiding it, but not by much.

It stings. Draco brushes it off. He’s ruled out another possibility.

///

“Merlin, I’m going to have to fucking kill him, aren’t I?”

He’s outside in the snow again after a particularly nasty go-around where Dolohov had cursed a couple of his fingers off. He looks down at his hands now, checks all ten are still there and feels the others’ eyes on him, the golden trio shining real gold in the aureate light of the lamppost above them.

“Who?” Granger asks.

“Dolohov,” Draco says, and then reels off his explanation spiel. He’s gotten it down to a couple of sentences after all this practice. He even remembers to tell Granger to protect her beaded bag.

When he’s done, Potter, predictable as ever, opens his mouth. Draco’s expecting it and ignores him.

“Granger,” he says instead. “You’re a closet Take That fan and you cried the summer after fourth year when one of them left — Robert someone? I forget — even though you saw it coming and think it’s the best decision for everyone involved.”

Granger blinks at him. It had been her idea — or, the her of twenty replays ago, anyway — to tell him that, something he would have no way of knowing otherwise. A quick way to prove to them all that he isn’t lying, or completely out of his mind.

“Robbie,” she says, shocked into smiling, and Potter laughs too. He does that most times when Draco has to use that piece of information. It makes Draco wish Granger had picked something else; it’s getting too hard to watch Potter’s smiling face knowing that in less than an hour, it'll be screwed up in pain.

“Ok,” Potter says. “So.”

“We’re going in anyway, I know, I know,” Draco sighs. “You never bloody let me convince you to stay out here.”

“How many times have you done this now?” Weasley asks, curious.

“Too many.”

He’d considered making marks on his arm with his wand or something, but by the time the idea occurred to him he’d already started to lose track, and what was the point, anyway, of counting it? He wants it to stop, and he isn’t bothered about having some number to shout about when it’s all over. If it ever _is_.

Potter goes in first like he usually does, tests the door with his wand before they all file in behind him. Draco’s barely over the threshold before he pushes past and heads for the stairs, ignoring the furious whispers of the others. He already knows where Dolohov is and he’s made up his mind to try this. After a tiny pause, there are footsteps behind him. The other three are following him, because they’re Gryffindors, and because they’re nauseatingly good people who won’t let him go up there alone, even if they might not entirely believe what he’s told them is waiting.

They take Dolohov slightly off guard, Draco thinks, when they find him in the bedroom. It’s hard to tell because his face is twisted and ugly and he’s too smart for his own good, so he might have seen them on the street, heard them coming, but there’s a split second of surprise that Draco takes and runs with as far as he can.

He hadn’t thought he’d be able to do it, actually try to end someone’s life (see: the infamous Dumbledore fiasco of last year) but it’s weirdly easy to want to hurt Dolohov when he pictures a dozen Potters, all of them bleeding out in the backseat. It’s not enough for an Unforgivable — he probably won’t ever be able to cast those, doesn’t have the stomach for it — but it’s enough for a stupidly powerful _Reducto_ that blasts the other half of the ceiling down on Dolohov’s head.

It all goes very quiet then. This is new territory, unknown, a feeling Draco hasn’t experienced for— what, a month or something? Technically, when you add it all up? God, he hopes the fucker is dead. He _looks_ dead. He’s half-buried under a pile of rubble and there’s snow falling in from the hole in the roof. Draco really wants to sleep, properly. This passing out and waking up a few hours earlier shit is not exactly restful, even if his body restores itself every time.

“Is he,” Potter starts to say. Draco can’t look at him, afraid that it’s not real, that he’s not really ok and that if he turns around Potter will be on the floor, bleeding. But he comes up behind Draco until he’s only a few inches away and they both look down at Dolohov’s twitching hand, his wand still clutched in it.

Draco knows it’s going to happen a second before it does. The hand twitches, harder, purposeful, and the jet of ugly, familiar orange light singes Draco’s side as it skims him and hits Potter, who makes an awful, gurgled noise and drops, his hands clutching at Draco’s jumper on the way down.

“For _fuck’s_ sake!” Draco yells, and shoots a Stunner at his own head, too impatient to wait for unconsciousness to take its sweet time in sending him back to the start again.

///

Back in the snow, he takes a second to appreciate what an idiotic move that had been. If killing Dolohov _had_ been the trigger to break the loop, he’d just stunned himself and left Weasley and Granger to drag both his and Potter’s useless bodies from the wreckage. Still, no time to dwell.

“Right,” he says, the other three turning to look at him. He takes a moment to focus on Potter, alive and intact once more, before he’s up the path and pulling the door open, yelling.

“Alright, Dolohov, you absolute _bastard_ of an inconvenience. I know you’re in there.”

It certainly speeds up the process. They don’t even make it upstairs before Dolohov appears, shooting curses from the landing and grinning horribly at them whilst he leans over the bannister. A man that side of fifty should really not be able to bend like that, Draco thinks, and sends a hex at him that misses and explodes a wall sconce.

“Granger,” Draco yells over the sound of Dolohov blowing up the floorboards just in front of Weasley’s feet. “Don’t let him hit your bag.”

He doesn’t wait to see if she’s heard him, just throws himself forward until he’s at the foot of the stairs and sends a _Reducto_ at the ceiling again, but Dolohov gets up a shaky _Protego_ that sends pieces of brick and plaster rebounding all over the place. For a brief second Draco wonders if he’s not the only one stuck in a loop, some of Dolohov’s moves are starting to seem a little too premeditated, but then:

“Oh,” he says as something hits him on the head, hard. “ _Ow_.” The pain is so bad his vision swims for a second and he stands, dazed, swaying, thoughts literally knocked from his mind, vaguely aware of the sound of Potter yelling somewhere to his left and a body hitting the floor.

When he lifts a hand to his forehead it comes away wet.

“If we end up with matching scars, Potter, I’ll off myself,” he says, even though no-one’s listening. Dolohov’s busy trying to slam Granger through the wall into the next room, which means his focus is off his shield charm enough for Draco to get a wobbly stunning spell around it and he crumples, toppling over the bannister and landing on the stairs with a sickening thud-crunch noise.

“How did you even know he was going to _be_ here?” Granger says, panting into the sudden quiet. Weasley’s on her in two long strides, hands turning her head this way and that, looking for injuries until she bats him away. “I’m _fine_ , Ron— don’t— Harry.” Her eyes fall to the heap that is Potter on the floor.

Draco starts explaining as he spins and drops down next to Potter, who’s awake but grimacing in a puddle of his own blood. Everything’s happened much quicker than Draco’s used to and it’s blindsided him, left him reeling and confused. Might be the fucking lump of brick that fell on his head actually, but either way.

“Wait, wait,” Granger says, stumbling over to kneel down alongside him. “You’ve lived this before?”

“ _Yes_ , but listen, there’s no time.” He pulls his jumper over his head, almost keels over as the movement makes his head throb in pain and presses it dizzily to Potter’s side. “Honestly, Draco,” he mutters to himself. “This is why you get the long-winded explanation bit out of the way _before_ you go charging into the house.”

Granger stares at him like she’s worried for his sanity. It doesn’t matter, there’s no _time_.

They get Potter up and out into the snow again faster than they’ve ever managed, and Draco quickly finds and unlocks the car. He’s watched Granger do it so many times that he can replicate the wand movement perfectly.

There seems to be even more blood than usual once they’re situated in the back seat. Draco’s starting to get used to the smell of it, thick and metallic, but it’s still not _pleasant_. It still sticks in his nose and throat and heightens his panic.

Potter opens his mouth just as they pull onto the slip road. “Bit of a—”

“Don’t fucking say it,” Draco pants, pressing hard on the wadded up jumper even though he knows it won’t work, hasn’t worked, any of the other times.

“Right,” Potter gasps, flinches as the car bumps over something. Draco always forgets to remind Granger to swerve. “Sorry. Heard it before.”

There’s quiet for a moment, just Potter’s harsh breathing and the complaining sounds from the car as Granger pushes the accelerator down as far as it’ll go.

“You’re bleeding too, you know,” Potter says after a bit, starting to shiver.

Draco nods distractedly — he can feel it dripping down his forehead — but the pain is background in comparison to the fact that Potter’s uncontrollable shaking phase is setting in.

“Next exit, Granger.” He doesn’t even have to look to know where they are, just lays himself out over Potter, leaning rather more heavily than he intends to because his balance is all off. The faint feeling that usually takes him over in a couple of minutes is already there, pulling at the edges of his vision, and he knows it’s because he’s hurt. It only makes him panic more, not for himself, but for Potter, knowing that if he passes out first there’ll be no one to keep Potter awake.

Potter’s eyes are still open for now, though, staring up at the roof of the car. There’s this look on his face, one Draco can’t figure out, and then his lips part and Draco’s struck with a truly idiotic idea.

Nothing he’s tried so far has stopped Potter getting hurt. Not sitting it out all together, not pulling him aside, not even burying Dolohov in rubble. He’s sure that doing one thing differently is the key to breaking the loop, like if he does something unexpected enough, it’ll throw the sequence out, but he’s running out of ideas. Except—

It’s not logical, really. Potter’s already injured, so ending the time loop now won’t necessarily save him. But there’s still one thing Draco hasn’t tried, something so completely out of the ordinary that it might just work. And maybe it’s the head injury, or maybe he’s just getting really, stupidly desperate, but it might be worth a shot.

“It’s the only thing left I can think of,” he says to himself, out loud, and Potter raises his eyebrows. Parts his lips further, probably to ask Draco what the hell he’s talking about, but he doesn’t get a chance. Draco kisses him.

It tastes pretty bad, because Potter has a mouthful of blood and Draco doesn’t have any kind of vampire fetish thanks, but it’s still good, more than good, more than Draco’s ever let himself hope for. 

Potter’s hands are in his hair and he gasps into Potter’s mouth because fucking _hell_ that cut on his scalp hurts but he also feels like it might hurt a lot more if he stops, if either of them pulls back.

“What the _fuck?_ ” he hears Weasley say from the front. “Now? They’re doing this now?”

Granger doesn’t respond, or Draco doesn’t hear her, distracted by Potter’s small, hitched noises, indistinguishably pain or pleasure, Draco can’t tell.

He tries to pull back for breath but Potter won’t let him, keeps straining his neck up to keep Draco’s mouth against his. He’s going to do himself more damage if he tries to use any of his core muscles to hold himself up so Draco pushes him properly down into the seats by the shoulders, makes him stay put. He licks into his mouth in a half-apology and Potter grunts and then softens, sinks back and lets himself be kissed like he’s too tired for much more participation. That’s ok with Draco. He’s getting a bit carried away as it is.

He detaches himself with a soft, wet sound but stays close, breathing against Potter’s cheek. One of Potter’s hands comes up and sifts through his hair again, the touch so careful that the gentleness of it aches more than the damned scalp laceration. Draco lets him, distantly aware of Weasley still ranting away in the front seat.

“Draco,” Potter whispers, but then his hand brushes down the vulnerable skin of Draco’s neck and catches on something behind one ear. Draco flinches, tries to shift back. Potter holds him still with a surprisingly strong grip.

He tugs on something lodged into Draco’s neck and Draco swears and succeeds in jerking his head away. Potter holds it up. It’s small and jagged and sort of shiny, glinting gold but wet with Draco’s blood.

“What,” Draco starts to say and then it’s black.

///

He wakes up in a bed.

“Oh, thank _fuck_.” He’s horizontal, definitely, wonderfully fucking _horizontal_ , not standing up in the snow.

“Morning to you, too,” says Potter, and Draco turns to find him only feet away. They’re in adjacent beds, the walls white, the clinical smell of disinfectant everywhere.

Draco’s whole body goes limp with relief. He feels like he slept for a week, like he could sleep for a week more. 

“It worked,” he breathes to the ceiling, feeling Potter’s eyes on the side of his face. God knows where Weasley and Granger are — finding food hopefully, Draco’s fucking starving — but he’s glad they’re not there to see the look on his face. It’s probably embarrassing.

He _did_ it. He broke the cycle.

“No more time loop?” Potter asks.

Draco shakes his head, wincing as it moves against the pillow. He’s never touched sheets with this low a thread count before, they’re like paper, and the head injury isn’t particularly comfortable either. “Don’t think so. I mean, can’t be sure, obviously. But I don’t usually get this far.” He hasn’t woken up somewhere other than that street for more days than he can count. If he ever sees the godforsaken place again it’ll be too soon. When all this is over, if Potter wants to move back to his bloody birth town, Draco’ll just have to put his foot down, he’s not living within ten miles of the place and oh, where did _that_ thought come from? They’re not— it was _one_ kiss, and it was purely in the interest of saving Potter’s life.

“What d’you think did it?” says Potter, and Draco turns to face him again, look at him properly, catalogue the damage. Whoever invented that spell obviously hadn’t thought to consider Muggle methods of healing — probably Dolohov himself, the racist bastard — but it’s a good thing, because Potter’s wound is all clean and hidden away under sterile white bandages. He doesn’t have a shirt on but he looks warm, tucked under a couple of blankets. Tired, but ok. Draco exhales.

“What broke the loop?” Potter prompts when Draco still hasn’t said anything.

“I don’t—” He can’t help but look at Potter’s mouth. Someone’s cleaned the blood away and he’s biting his lip, his teeth white against the flesh, eyes wide. It’s stupid and frankly sort of— mortifying, unacceptably _romantic_ to think, even for a second, that Draco’s hunch was right, that that’s what did it, what saved them both, him leaning down and slanting their mouths together. But it seems like the only explanation. That’s the one thing he did differently.

He could make a joke. Something about the magical healing quality of his mouth, or his clearly spectacular kissing ability, but he doesn’t. He blinks at Potter, pulse rocketing the longer they sit there, eyes locked, not saying anything. Potter lets his bottom lip slip free of his teeth and Draco feels his own lips part in response, unavoidable.

“I kissed you,” he says, like Potter might have forgotten. “And the loop..”

Potter starts laughing. It’s not the reaction Draco’s expecting.

“Sorry,” Potter gets out. “I can’t— it wasn’t—” He dissolves into helpless giggles again and gestures at something small and sharp sitting in a metal tray on the table between their beds. “Time turner,” he says, eventually. “Exploded and a piece embedded itself in your neck.”

It’s a good thing they’re in a hospital, because Draco almost opens his chest again for letting him believe in all that power of love bullshit, even for a minute.

Potter laughs so hard he starts coughing. It looks like it hurts a bit. Good.

“To be fair to you, it _was_ sort of the kiss,” he says when he’s collected himself.

Draco, who’d turned away grumpily to stare at the opposite wall, turns back just as grumpily, interested despite himself.

“Pulling that piece out of your neck effectively ended the loop. If you hadn’t kissed me I would never have had my hands on you in the first place and I wouldn’t have found it.”

Draco tries desperately not to let the way Potter says _my hands on you_ go straight to his head. Or, you know, other parts.

“So, what?” he asks. “I got hit by fucking time-shrapnel and ended up stuck repeating the same shitty hours over and over?”

Potter shrugs. “Basically. Hermione figured it out in about three seconds once she got her hands on that.” He nods at the shard of metal. “It was her time-turner.”

The door opens then and Weasley and Granger come in, bruised, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, but alive. Draco’s surprised at how relieved he is to see that they’re ok. He’d sort of thought all his compassion reserves were spent, by this point.

“Good, you’re awake.” Granger falls into a chair opposite their beds. “I assume Harry’s told you? The shard must have stuck in you when my bag got hit.” She holds up the beaded bag.

“Hang on,” Draco says. “How did you know the bag exploded?” He nods at where the bag is very obviously still intact, clutched in her hand.

“You told me to keep it safe.” She looks at him like it’s obvious. “When we were in the house. You’re the only one who’s been living this over and over, so I figured if you knew to warn me, that’s what must have happened the first time around.”

Right. Sometimes Draco forgets just how fast her brain works. “That doesn’t explain how we’re both alive.” He gestures at himself and Potter.

“Oh, that’s simple.” She sounds like she’s answering a question in class and Draco gets hit with a wave of confused nostalgia for back when they all still hated him, and he them, and no-one had tried to kill him in the last twenty-four hours. “The loop kept kicking in when you lost consciousness, so you were never awake long enough to see if we got to the hospital in time. Harry stopped it by removing the piece, so when you blacked out this time, everything continued chronologically as it should and we were able to get you both here.” She smiles at him a little. “Though, I think you getting us out of there and to the car so quickly probably helped a lot. I’m not sure they’d have been able to do much to save either of you if we were much later, even with the loop broken.”

There’s a compliment in there somewhere, but Draco’s brain is too busy catastrophizing about what would have happened if he’d been just a little slower. He shakes his head to clear it. They’re fine, they made it, it’s not worth thinking about.

“Why do you even _have_ a time-turner?” he asks instead, leaning back on his pillows.

“I nicked it when we were in the Ministry looking for the locket. Figured it might be useful.” She has the grace to look slightly abashed. “Obviously I didn’t think something like this was going to happen.”

“Obviously.” Draco rolls his eyes.

“It’s actually quite fascinating,” she says, defensive. “I’ve never even _heard_ of anyone suffering from a time-related injury like this before. And the fact that the fragment stayed lodged in you even when you managed to avoid the bag getting hit in all the timelines after..”

“Yeah, that is weird,” Weasley agrees. He has the wretched thing in his hand, swinging the pendant in front of his eyes. “How it’s here, whole, but there’s still that piece.”

They have to stop talking about it then because a nurse comes in. Weasley hurriedly tucks the time-turner out of sight.

“You’re awake,” the nurse says, smiling at Draco. Draco nods, not trusting himself to actually say anything. He has no idea what Granger told these people about how he and Potter got hurt.

She bustles around, checking the cut on Draco’s scalp which is tender, but no longer blindingly painful, lifting Potter’s blankets to inspect his dressings. They all sit there in silence whilst she works until she finishes ticking some things off on a chart and turns to them, hands on hips.

“Now.” Her face is round and friendly, but her tone is firm. “Are you sure there’s no one I can call? Your parents?”

“Dead,” Potter says quickly, sighing and giving her his best orphan look. Draco almost snorts, but she turns her stern gaze on him and he has to school his expression quickly.

“Disinherited,” he says, shrugging. “You could call them, I suppose, but I doubt they’d consider my brush with death little more than a minor inconvenience, considering they kicked me out and told me to never darken their doorstep again.” Not strictly true, obviously, he was the one who’d left, but he’s always had a flair for dramatics and it gets her face to soften a bit in sympathy.

Over her shoulder, Weasley rolls his eyes and mouths _laying it on a bit thick_ at Draco. She spins to raise her eyebrows at him expectantly.

“Oh, er, mine are dead too,” he says quickly. “Yeah, total um, orphan and all that.” He’s the worst liar Draco knows.

She turns to Granger. “Abroad,” is all she says, and the nurse throws up her hands like she’s going to argue but then abruptly closes her mouth and leaves them to it.

Draco sees Granger stowing her wand away and fixes her with a look. She doesn’t even seem guilty for having cast on an unsuspecting Muggle, which just goes to show how much shit they’ve all had to get used to since this started.

“We’ll have to leave as soon as we can,” Granger says once they’re alone again. “You lot are still underage by Muggle standards and they’ll want to get the police involved.”

“What did you tell them?” Potter asks.

“Car crash. But seeing as there’s no wrecked car for them to find, I doubt that story’ll hold for long. We really can’t keep Obliviating our way out of things.”

“Don’t see why not,” Weasley says through a yawn, and gets himself a filthy look from Granger.

Potter’s wound stops repelling magic by the time lunch is over. Another foible of Dolohov’s, though he probably fairly assumed that the person on the receiving end would be dead before much time had passed, rendering the anti-healing effects unnecessary. They try simple cleaning charms around the gauze every half an hour until one of them takes and Potter whoops.

“Finally,” he says, pushing back the covers on his bed. Draco averts his eyes, trying not to focus on the bandages that break up the smooth lines of his torso. “Let’s go. This food is terrible.”

It’s Christmas day, something Draco had almost forgotten until they’d brought round pathetic looking turkey slices just after noon. He’s quite glad they’re ready to leave, honestly. There’s something horribly depressing about the limp strands of tinsel strung up everywhere. The only thing worse than a hospital room is a hospital room trying not to look like one.

Potter pulls on the clothes that Granger digs out of her bag and throws to him and then waves his wand, looking around the room expectantly until something thuds into the closed door. He goes to retrieve it, comes back with a whole load of those pill things the Muggles like to use instead of potions.

Granger’s face turns stern. “What are you doing?”

Potter gives her a look. “C’mon, ‘Mione. We need to save our pain relief potions. They’d be giving them to me anyway if I stayed.”

She looks unhappy about it, but she lets Potter stuff them into his pocket.

“God bless the NHS,” he says, and the four of them file through the many corridors, hidden under Notice-Me-Nots until they’re outside in the dark. The snow here is barely snow at all, grey slush on tarmac under the wheels of hundreds of cars.

“What did you do with the car?” Draco asks Granger.

She shrugs, face guilty. “Ditched it. Reckon it’s safe for us to apparate now anyway.”

“Now Harry’s not a walking cadaver, you mean,” Weasley snorts.

“Oi.” Potter narrows his eyes, then grins. “I don’t remember doing much walking.”

Weasley laughs. “Fair point. Now you mention it, I seem to remember you being _very_ horizontal in the back seat, all laid out with _someone_ on top of you—”

Draco hits him over the back of the head. He has to stretch up to do it — he’s tall but Weasley is tall on an unnatural level, something Draco likes reminding him of — but it’s worth it. He hopes he’s not blushing. They haven’t actually talked about anything really, him and Potter, and definitely not him and Potter and Weasley and Granger. It’s a conversation Draco feels can wait until they’re not standing in a car park, at the very least.

Potter looks a little embarrassed too, but he’s still grinning.

They break into a supermarket opposite the hospital, Draco freezing the alarms and those weird camera things because he got really good at it a couple of bouts of petty thievery back, Granger filling up a trolley because she got over her moral high-ground around the same time. She doesn’t even try and leave any money in the till, though Draco hears her telling Weasley it’s because of _cash balances_ and _not wanting to upset their records_.

Potter corners him in the freezer aisle when the other two are off looking at wine. Draco can hear them, arguing over Shiraz, but the sound tunes out as Potter backs him up against one of the glass doors. It’s ice-cold against his back and Potter is very, very warm when he lines them up, knees to chest, his arms either side of Draco’s head.

He doesn’t say anything, just slots their mouths together like it’s the last piece of a puzzle he’s trying to finish, here: shoulders align, here: lips. Draco presses his fingernails into his palms to stop himself making an embarrassing noise and pretends the lingering taste of hospital gravy on Potter’s tongue is unappealing, for the sake of his sanity.

“Ron’s right, you know,” Potter says when he lets Draco go. The light from the freezer reflects off his lenses, and Draco blinks at him. “What he said back in the car. This probably isn’t the time to start something.”

“ _This_ as in right now, in front of the frozen peas, or _this_ as in halfway into a war that’s likely going to kill one of us?”

“Are we halfway?” Potter doesn’t even flinch at the mention of dying. Draco supposes he’s done it a hundred times over by now, but _he’s_ not supposed to remember that. “Bit optimistic.”

“I am known for my unfailing positivity in the face of infinite setbacks.”

Potter snorts. “You set fire to the tent because we ran out of teabags like, last week.”

Draco sniffs. It isn’t his fault canvas is so flammable.

“Anyway,” Potter says. “Both. It’s cold here, my nose is going numb and the others’ll come looking for us soon, so this—” he indicates the frozen peas — “is definitely not the time.”

“You started it,” says Draco.

Potter just looks at him. “I meant the other thing.”

“The war.”

“Yeah.”

Draco sighs, put upon and dramatic. “Such an inconvenience.”

“Yeah,” Potter says again, except he doesn’t sound like he’s joking, and his eyes have gone all sad and wide.

“Suppose we’ll just have to make use of the time we’ve got then,” says Draco, and cups a hand over Potter’s cold nose. It’s an odd thing to do, and Draco’s hands aren’t much warmer than the skin underneath them but it makes Potter’s eyes crinkle.

“S’pose we will,” he says, mouth moving against the edge of Draco’s palm. Draco shivers. It’s not because of the temperature.

“Oi,” Weasley calls from the end of the aisle. “One of you please come tell ‘Mione there’s no point having a Christmas dinner if we’re not getting pigs-in-blankets.”

Potter rolls his eyes and Draco drops his hand, though not before Potter darts his tongue out and it makes contact with Draco’s skin for a split, hot second. “She’s a vegetarian, Ron, honestly,” he says, starting back up the aisle.

They get a frozen turkey. Granger defrosts it with her wand and a distinct look of distaste once they’ve traipsed back out into the snow and found a safe spot to apparate, getting the tent and the protective enchantments up in record time because it’s too cold to be standing around in the Forest of Dean at the arse end of the year.

“This is why I suggested we use my tent,” Draco says, watching Weasley try to shove the turkey into the tiny oven in their tiny tent kitchen. “It has two ovens and an aga.”

“It’s also at your house, along with every person in the country who currently wants us dead.” Granger’s started on the wine. She has a book open on the table and a full, chipped mug with Potter’s face on, one she’d apparently bought in fourth year as a joke (Potter hates it, so naturally it’s the most used piece of crockery in the entire kitchen) and she prods at Draco with a socked foot.

“Not _every_ person.”

Granger only shrugs. Draco steals one of her pringles whilst he waits for Weasley to get the damned oven door closed.

The turkey ends up tasting a bit off, whether because it was from a discount supermarket or because Weasley has to shrink it and then regrow it again in order to get it cooked properly, Draco doesn’t know, but it’s not bad after his third mug of wine, and even he can admit Weasley makes a damn good roast potato. Granger puts away about nine of them, and half a mushroom wellington.

“Crackers,” she says when they’re all slumped in their chairs, tired in the warm, drowsy kind of way only a full stomach brings on.

“Muggles have Christmas crackers?” Draco asks, running his thumb through the gravy left on his plate in a move that would have gotten him a ten minute lecture had he tried it back home. If his parents could see him now.. Though, considering present company and the fact he’s run away from everything they brought him up to believe in, table manners might not be high on their list of priorities.

Potter snorts. “Don’t get excited.” He looks tired, propped up with one arm on the table opposite Draco. Draco smiles at him, he can’t help it.

The Muggle crackers are suitably underwhelming. They don’t even bang very loud, no smoke or sparks whatsoever, and all that’s inside are some bits of paper and plastic. “You call this a hat?” Draco asks, holding up the flimsy excuse for what he can only assume is supposed to be some kind of crown.

“Nose down, Malfoy,” Granger sighs amiably.

He gestures with the hat. “But it’s _yellow_. Someone swap with me.”

Potter rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a prick,” he says, and shoves his own onto his head.

Draco wears the stupid paper crown.

Weasley tips his empty cracker upside down and shakes it. “That’s really all there is in it?”

Nobody bothers to answer him. Draco inspects the tiny plastic penguin that fell out of his and cranks the wind-up dial on the side until its little feet start pedalling frantically, startling him.

“Put it down,” Granger advises, only mostly succeeding in not outright laughing at him, and they all watch the penguin hobble lopsidedly over the tabletop until it comes to a stop.

“Well, we obviously have to race,” Potter says, matter of fact, holding up his plastic reindeer.

Never mind that they’re all basically adults, Draco thinks, or that they’re on the run, wanted by the government, supposed to be looking for pieces of psychopath soul to destroy so that they can end the bloody war. Never mind that he still has stitches in his scalp, that Potter can’t walk for more than two minutes without needing to stop and rest. Never mind all that when Potter is clearly cheating with some kind of stabilising charm on his reindeer that’s making it win every time.

“Okay,” Granger says after the twelfth call for a rematch. “Who’s taking first watch?”

Weasley makes a pleading face at her. “Surely we can have a night off.”

Granger’s mouth thins. “You think You-Know-Who’s taking a night off, Ronald? You think they’re all having a nice, relaxing Christmas holiday? Have you learned nothing from the past twenty-four hours?”

 _Draco_ has. Several things, in fact. Not to stand within a ten metre radius of a time-turner when blasting curses start getting thrown about. Who Robbie Williams is. What the inside of Potter’s mouth tastes like.

Weasley rolls his eyes, counter-argument ready on his tongue and Draco gets up, leaves them bickering happily at the table whilst he goes and pulls the blanket off his bunk and then folds himself down just outside the mouth of the tent. It’s easier than trying to get them to stop, and it’s not like Potter should be the one out here. It’s freezing, and he needs to rest.

Doesn’t stop Draco from half-hoping he’ll follow him out.

It should be dark outside of the warm glow of the tent interior — it’s late and the trees obscure most of the moonlight, but the piles of snow seem to shine a bit in the gloom, breaking up the blackness. Draco pulls the blanket tighter around him, eyes trained on the trees, and counts to fifty-two in his head before the flap opens behind him and Potter waddles out, wrapped in two blankets and wearing something misshapen and knitted on his head.

“What the fuck,” Draco says — fairly politely, he thinks, considering — “is that?”

Potter laughs at him. “A gift from your old house-elf.”

Draco doesn’t even want to know. Harry Potter: befriender of house-elves. Idiot who’ll risk pneumonia just to sit outside with Draco in the snow. Forgiver of boys who really don’t deserve forgiveness.

Potter’s plonked himself down very close to Draco and he leans into him right away. Draco doesn’t know why he expected Potter, who’s practically the patron saint of throwing oneself into things, to be less forward now that they’ve crossed whatever line this is, but he’s surprised again how easily Potter just kisses him, no preamble.

“How’s your nose?” Draco asks when they break apart, the damp sound of it loud in the quiet forest.

Potter frowns at him, confused.

Draco feels his face heat. “You know. Before. With the frozen— you said your nose was going numb.”

“Oh.” Potter smiles so wide Draco can see his fucking molars. “It’s been better. Didn’t you say something about warming it up?”

“I think,” Draco says, muffled because Potter’s leaned back in, impatient. He has to stop talking to give as good as he’s getting, push back into Potter’s space and bite gently at his bottom lip, but when he’s done, when Potter’s looking satisfyingly dazed, he carries on. “I think my actual words were something about making the best of the time we’ve got.”

“Same difference,” Potter says, and pulls him in again.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the title is from time after time by cyndi lauper, i went there.


End file.
